John Cooper, Father Of Modern Race Car, Dies

by Larry Roberts

It probably won't make it to the evening sports news on television
but John Cooper, the father of the modern single-seater race car, died
last week at the age of 77 at his home in England.

And how ironic that the best-known vehicle to bear his name is the
Austin Mini Cooper which is not a race car at all but a minuscule
British econobox sedan that he developed as a sideline.

The reason for Cooper's notoriety in racing circles is that he was
the first modern constructor to take the engine out of the front-mounted
engine bay and put it behind the driver. Prior to this relocation of the
powerplant, international Formula One cars, Indianapolis racers and
virtually all other forms of open-wheel racing had forward-mounted
engines. Cooper was a pioneer whose design parameters have been adopted
by almost every race car builder in the world.

Cooper's beginnings in the race car business were humble. He and
Eric Brandon, another car designer of note, put together a tiny
four-wheeled single-seater for the British-only Formula 3 circuit that
was the only type of racing that amateur and professional race
enthusiasts could afford at the end of World War II. The duo constructed
a chassis using parts salvaged from a tiny Italian Fiat "Topolino" sedan
and installed a JAP Speedway motorcycle and transmission behind the
driver's cramped cockpit. The car was an instant success and many future
champions like Jack Brabham and Sterling Moss got their starts behind
the wheel of Cooper's tiny racers. Even the current Formula One
impresario Bernie Ecclestone owned and raced one in the '50s.

Unlike many of the contemporary Formula 3 builders of that era,
Cooper entered into more prestigious racing venues when he elaborated on
the rear-engined theme and put larger four-cylinder Coventry-Climax
converted pump engines into a tubular space frame of his own design.
Steve Froines, a friend and long-time Cooper race car restorer, told me
that in those early days, the Cooper "works" mechanics eschewed formal
blueprints and simply laid out a chassis on the concrete floor, cut and
bent steel tubing to match and welded them together using the chalk
"template" as a pattern.

But if the methods used were simplistic, the successes were
dramatic. When he first entered into the heady world of Grand Prix
racing with the enlarged but still small cars, the establishment
laughed. But the successes gained by Cooper drivers soon had Ferrari,
Lotus, and the rest putting their engines behind the driver.

Cooper's rear-engined design first appeared at the Indianapolis 500
in 1960, when Brabham placed his grossly underpowered Formula One Cooper
into eighth place among the then all-conquering front-engined sprint
car-type cars. Within a few years there were no front-engined cars at
the Indy 500.

Although John Cooper stepped out of racing in 1965, his name is
destined to be recognized by at least a generation of upcoming American
BMW buyers. That German company now owns the Austin Mini name and will
soon begin marketing an updated and very upscale version of that little
British sedan.

The name that BMW has selected to introduce the car under is the
Mini Cooper. It's a fitting memorial to the man who changed the
configuration of open-wheel racing.